Ai Weiwei ‘Shocked’ to Find Out the Real Estate Firm Selling His Berlin Apartment Used It for Unauthorized Commercial Film Shoots

Just two years after leaving Berlin — and his troubles with Germany — to move to the UK, Ai Weiwei told Artnet News he was “shocked” to discover a company maintaining his old Berlin apartment and was supposed to sell. Instead, he allegedly used the space without his consent.

The Chinese artist claims that a real estate company with an office in Berlin that helped sell the apartment conducted several “unauthorized” promotional shots and events at his former home of which he was unaware. The company has denied the claim.

The Chinese artist bought the apartment in Prenzlauer Berg, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in former East Berlin, in 2015 while the dissident activist was still under house arrest in Beijing, China. Ai told Artnet News that at the time of buying the apartment he was only able to bring his son and his mother to Germany while the artist was waiting for the Chinese authorities to return his passport.

When he finally moved to Europe with the support of the German government, Ai lived with his family in Berlin for several years. The house on Greifswalderstrasse, said Ai, has always been a positive place full of touching memories. “This place gave me a long-lost sense of security,” Ai said. “From the day I was born, I was forced to move with my parents, constantly leaving and arriving in one place, and endlessly negotiating my identity.” This feeling of security that the apartment brings to him and his family is difficult the discovery of the alleged abuse, he added.

Although he maintains a studio in Berlin, Ai decided to leave Germany in 2019 and publicly cited the political and social problems there as the reason for his departure. In June 2021, a tailor-made real estate agency was hired to sell his apartment and offered marketing services for this.

In early January, Ai said he was shocked to learn from his assistant that the apartment was being used for a film shoot for a chocolate brand. “She called to tell me there were about 20 people filming at my apartment,” Ai said. “I never imagined that the agency would rent my apartment to a third party for a profit.” The company disputes the claim that 20 people were in the apartment, adding that the purpose of allowing a video shoot there was to “…and to attract more potential buyers in order to get the best possible price”.

According to a resignation letter from Ai’s lawyer shared with Artnet News, the company also made an extra copy of his keys. The company denies this and says they were authorized to enter the apartment. But according to Ai’s assistant, who visited the apartment when the film company was working there, no one from the local real estate agency was there.

Ai said it emerged that the apartment had also been used for various commercial projects, including product launches, promotions and branding events, for the past six months without his knowledge. He said he and his team found dozens of online posts with pictures taken indoors promoting more than 35 brands or companies. A public relations worker had posted about the apartment on his business Instagram account, describing the place as a “home away from home”. The company said the second agent was informed about the collaboration and that Ai’s assistant visited the apartment frequently and “at times was part of the preparations”.

And while Ai said most of the events and photoshoots took place at his Berlin apartment without his knowledge, he admitted to approving a marketing venture with luxury paint brand Farrow & Ball, who repainted his apartment and held a photoshoot there, though he said he was never sent the final photos or told when or where they would appear online. He said he was surprised to find them all over the internet as he and his team looked into the matter this month. “People are breaking away from moral compulsions and exaggerating the beauty and happiness of life,” he said in his op-ed for Artnet News. “This is a widespread disease of our time.”

One of Ai’s relatives is preparing a meal in the Berlin apartment. Courtesy of the artist.

In its response to Ai, which the artist shared with Artnet News, the company said hosting such marketing events is part of its strategy to get the highest possible price for the apartment. They added that the company had an offer on the table and that an art world consultant from New York was interested.

Ai described the situation as a return to a “nightmare” in which his personal limits were exceeded. “To see my ‘home’ interpreted in a language and method so alien to my own shocked me far more than its destruction and cast a great shadow over my memory,” said the artist. “As I watched my home transformed into a vessel in which a group of commercial parasites could have fun, my sense of identity was again overwhelmed with alienation. Only my familiar confusion remains.”

The experience is also likely to do little to ease Ai’s battered feelings about the land he once called home. The artist moved to Cambridge in 2019, citing growing populism and anti-refugee sentiment in Germany and comfort towards China as reasons for his departure. “Germany is not an open society,” he told the local press at the time. “It’s a society that wants to be open, but above all protect itself.” While the UK isn’t much more progressive, the artist later added, the people there are at least “polite”.

The final drop for Ai came when he reported that he and his family were being harassed by a taxi driver in Berlin. The artist said that when an officer filed a police complaint, he attributed the dispute to “cultural differences,” a term that Ai called “an elegant packaging for structural discrimination” that “explains all the injustice experienced by an outsider ruthlessly wiped out”.

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